New Layout, Design & Features

As I’m sure you’ve noticed I’ve slowly been rolling out a new design for the past few days. There were a few main reasons for changing the look & feel of the blog:

1. I felt like the old design somehow was holding me back, it wasn’t clean enough & didn’t really give me any room to expand.
2. I wanted to regain a better sense of community around the blog with features that would benefit the readers.
3. I wanted something cleaner, that loaded faster & was easier to navigate. The old site didn’t really do anything to promote any of my older content.
4. I wanted to move away from any Adsense & offer affordable targeted advertising solutions that weren’t intrusive & didn’t drive my readers away.

So without further ado I present the new look, I’m very much still ironing out lots of things but I’m 100% certain the theme is usable & fully functional now. Here’s what’s changed:

Quick Overview of New Features

Top Content

On the homepage you’ll notice the Top Content Box which gives a brief overview of the top & featured posts on the blog, as well as the most commented, programs & recommend & a few other features that should be live soon

The panel uses the ever so useful domtab javascript to hide the content via CSS into a nice presentable table with tabs. Very snazzy.

Top Commentators & Trackbacks

In an effort to make commenting & linking to Earners Blog more enjoyable the top commentators for the month will appear on the front page & the trackbacks to each individual post will appear in the sidebar meaning that if you make a comment about a particular post your blog should get decent exposure too.

Better styled comments & subscriptions

The comments & trackbacks are now separated as mentioned previously. Comments are also styled so that my replies stand out. You now also have the option to subscribe to a particular conversation & get email updates when I reply to your comment.

Review Section

This is the part I’m most excited about, it’s still in beta & is getting tested but I aim to have all the major Affiliate Programs & Affiliate Networks reviewed with as much detail as I can get (possibly including interviews with the Founders of the company). Readers will be able to add their own reviews & so on. This section is going to take the most work, but it also has the most promise to become a really useful resource for Affiliate Marketers.

More Clearly Defined Categories

My categories before were all over the place, they’ve all been tidied up & more appropriate ones have been added. I also plan to add tagging for company names & other general terms (kinda like Techcrunch).

Easier Social Media Sharing

It’s now easier than ever to bookmark the posts you like & even email yourself a copy for future reference. I’ve only kept the main Bookmarking Services that most of you use so it should make things easier.

Better Contact Options

I’ve added more contact options & more clearly defined tabs at the top depending on what you want to contact me for. I really want to start featuring some guest posts so you know what to do A forum is also on the way.

New Ideas

I’ve come up with lots & lots of new ideas for user generated content, one of which should be kicking off within the next month. I’m always open to suggestions so don’t be afraid to shoot me an email.

So thanks for hanging around, I always get surprised when I see how many of you there are subscribed to the feed. So don’t be shy, come on over & leave a comment.

Stuart